School Garden, Beautiful and Productive!

full of food and flowers




organized

rain watered

The Girls and their Adventures

They have known eachother since almost-birth and now they are 12.



And tomorrow Mac is going with Isabel and her seventh grade class
for a 3 night/4day camping trip to Joshua Tree.
What an adventure. Although it looks a little prickly to me....



Have Fun!

Nana's Birthday Celebration

You never know what to expect around here. The best plans can be waylayed by just about anything lately ...craziness of all sorts...
But this little birthday party was very simple and sweet and peaceful.
Happy Birthday My Mama. We love you!

Multiple Sarcasms

One of my students has a son that wrote and directed this movie.
So lets all check it out and support it! The trailer looks great!
I think it's in NY now but should be all over soon.

(and thanks for all the movie recommends...you know they
immediatley made it to my netflix queue!)

fine films

With one exception, I would NEVER watch ANY of these movies Matt had me hunt for at Blockbuster.

Midsummer Night's Dream

Besides being some of the best three words strung together (that and Forest Pansy Redbud) and being the first play I participated in that I can remember in the 3rd grade (I was "Queen Titania" and the cutest boy named Carlos Privet was my "Bottom").... Midsummer Nights Dream is also great because Emmett's class put on a production of their own! Emmett and Isaiah both play "Bottom" and they are hilarious! I didn't want to miss the show because of Matt's surgery so I got to sneak peek a rehearsal on Tuesday. I just loved it! Nana got to see it last night! Beautiful job 3rd graders!

Emmett (in donkey head) as Bottom!

Spoon Fed

Interesting memoir by a NY Times food critic about the influential women in her life and the food they cook. Lots of good recipes in it ...if you ignore the ones with body parts...(teehee)
The author lives with her wife and daughter in Park Slope Brooklyn and moved there for the food co-op!! (Sheesh Cam, who doesn't live in Park Slope?!!)

Need I Say More...

Foot chop

As my brother Craig so kindly reminds me, tomorrow I am gettting the FOOT CHOP! Also known as a bunionectomy.

Love your Mother.

Someone asked me today if I went to Earth Day and I said I couldn't stand Earth Day because everyone just trashes the park and all sorts of corporate sponsors are there...and serious "greenwashing" goes on and everyone should just be cleaning up the place...and, of course, everyday should be Earth Day.
So there.
Then I went home and watched some of the PBS documentary on Earth Day and the environmental movement.
I am humbled and will stop adding any negativity to this important day.


It is true that every mother needs a special day...as well as help in the clean-up!

Matt's New Baby Fits Right In

We've spent the past few nights laying around listening to records.
First of all, I didn't know an amplifier could be so pretty (and hot!)
and I also completely forgot how much I was missing all these years
listening only to CDs. And now IPODs sound so so shitty in comparison.
Even the kids were amazed to hear Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell and
Steely Dan sound so different, "like they are in the room...and the
drums are over there..." etc.
Now our bedroom is complete...and I can't get Matt out of it...but
that is way better than the computer room...and so much better for the soul!

spring break 2010....CC&F come to visit...

...music, madness, dungeons and dragons, stinky hot springs (freezing pools), food, friends, fevers and barfing, more jamming and general hamming, easter egg dying, early morning hunting, hanging with the babies, breaking up the fights, bonding with a sister, flowers seedlings and more food, spring 2010!!

Spring!

Mac and Isabel sunbathing 2010 with sunscreen and sun hats!
Big difference from sun worshipping 1984, with baby oil and reflective mats!

Guess which days we are taking vacation in sunny southern california?

working some things out

Silas is completely excited about seeing Finley. He talks about it pretty much all day. He wants to play pretend, he says, and jump on the trampoline and go to the studio to make "scup-shas".
His one and only concern is that she might be bigger. And older. (I think he is forever trying to catch up to Ry...)
So here is a little melt down. Watch it before you show Feee to decide if she's up for it.
I only wish I caught video of all the many times he was running around the house doing the happy finley dance, or when he was kissing the calendar on the day she comes to visit....

hmmm?

Interesting chart from Kaiser comparing democrat health care proposals vs. republican plans from the past. What the democrats want now is what the republicans wanted then???
check it out here.
So what's all the hubbub bub??
Are the righties indeed getting more conservative or is it just a whole lotta bad sportsmanship
and political manipulation ?

AND...

let's look at the cost of health care in comparison to other things....
check it out

Hmmm???!!!

Happy Birthday Pop

and many more!

Read This!

I decided to just copy this whole article from Salon.

Of course it's BY GARRISON KEILLOR so, of course, after reading

it I feel clearer, more hopeful and have smile on my face.

TUESDAY, MAR 23, 2010 17:24 EDT

A toast to your health

GARRISON KEILLOR

Raise a glass for a landmark bill, achieved through the messy, maddening processes of representative democracy

The mind glazes over at the sight of the words so let's just refer to it as "hrothgar reform" and congratulate the president and Mrs. Pelosi for pushing it through Congress, a rational reform that the stonewall opposition depicted as a flock of hooded vampires rising from the steaming swamps of Stalinism. That strategy fell a few votes short.

Good hrothgar in America is a privilege and now Congress has, by a narrow margin, offered it up as a basic human right even if a person is unemployed and in poor hroth. This is a landmark bill, achieved through the messy and maddening processes of representative democracy, like harnessing tabby cats to push a plastic garden hose uphill, during which you read dozens of interesting articles about the fatal flaws of the Democratic Party and the twilight of the Obama administration, but what a difference a day can make. Goodbye, Sen. Scott Brown. Hello, Hrothgar.

The Republicans fought long and hard for people's right to wait three hours in an emergency room for someone to take their blood pressure, and they went down to defeat, and now they should stop and rethink their Waterloo strategy. The picture of the grinning GOP congressmen holding "Kill the Bill" posters was not an attractive one. Those guys all get excellent hrothgar from the government, at bargain prices. If you choke on your shoe during a speech in the House of Representatives, you'll be whisked away to Walter Reed, and specialists will extract your hoof from your mouth and your head from your colon and clean you up and all for a tiny annual premium. It does not behoove men who are enjoying a huge pork sandwich to deny a few pork rinds to others and to grin in the process.

Insurance is not an inherently interesting subject, not even hroth insurance. It is the province of short-haired men in pressed khakis and vest sweaters, poring over actuarial tables. The Republicans tried to add some spice. They brought in pictures of deadly vipers, ticking time bombs, death panels, flesh-eating plants, crazed zombies and the hounds of hell. They did not prevail.

Now Sen. McCain says there will be no further cooperation with the administration. OK then. Thanks for clearing that up. Now that bipartisanship has been buried for good, Democrats can get about the business of running the government, which is their duty as the majority party, and let the Republicans sulk in their rooms and work on their Facebook updates. They've made it clear that if Mr. Obama suddenly decided to come out in favor of Mother's Day, they would fight against it as a ruthless exercise of federal power and a violation of due process. Fine. Talk to the hand.

As for the hroth of the Republican Party, no doubt they will survive this setback. They will fume and prevaricate for a few weeks and then, if their pollsters read the owl droppings and find omens of the American People Moving On, the party will find a new issue. Here's one that is tailor-made for them. The federal government is spending $615,000 to help organize the Grateful Dead archive at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Here's a chance to lash out at the '60s and San Francisco and the irresponsibility of hippies playing 23-minute versions of four-minute songs for stadiums full of stoned people in T-shirts of many colors, shaking their ponytails. Apparently, the Dead hung onto every scrap of paper and now $615,000 of taxpayer money is going toward the digitization of the drug-crazed chicken-scratchings of songwriters and their admirers. This may be your last best chance to lash out at the counterculture. All those people who used to get stoned are heading toward Alzheimer Land and soon will be old and pitiful and not worth your ammunition. You could easily tie Jerry Garcia to Nancy Pelosi and link both of them to ACORN, the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek, the failure of Lehman Brothers, the use of growth hormones by professional athletes, and the Mayan prediction of apocalypse in 2012.

Meanwhile, life goes on. Some people believe that God has revealed Himself to them and their tribe and not to the barbarians. He despises all the same people they despise. Others feel that God has given gifts to be shared with others, and we should walk softly and not be cruel in His name. The prospect of perfect harmony is not good at the present time. Happy Easter. Good hroth. Be garful.

(Garrison Keillor is the author of "77 Love Sonnets," published by Common Good Books.)

(c) 2010 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

The E-mail Picture that is Floating Around Matt's Work

I am sure he has love/hate feelings about this.
I am all about the love with this one!

Mac was a Fabulous "Klang"!!!

Mac is happy to have her morsels of free time returned to her...but, in the end, misses Pippi!
Next up, Junior Theatre Camp!!

centerpieces for the garden gala

this is my kind of project....

Happy St. Patricks Day

AND....Happy Happy Birthday Aida!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Child Cracks Me Up!

Come ON!
We love you Baby Feee and we can't wait to get us some of THAT!
It won't be long and we will all be playing in this....

I can't believe I am saying it....but....WOOT!

Funny Link About Breast Feeding.

You have to Check it out.


...and a photo in solidarity.

A Farmer's Market in Our Very Own School

I have pretty much been out of the garden loop since December but it was wonderful and re-inspiring to see all the harvest from those early September and October plantings. (check out the school blog for more pictures!)Amy spent the day with the 3rd graders picking and washing and bunching everything. Thank God for her dedication!! Now who is gonna get this woman PAID so she's able to keep up this level of commitment? ???!!! Who's gonna find the grant, write the grant to pay her for the 5-10 hours a WEEK she spends tending and teaching our kids???.... because, truly, without her continuous work and organization it all falls apart. No matter how many parents volunteer to weed! (Maybe you can sense my frustration.)
I know that a co-op school is about volunteerism but my worry is that when something is created that is really valuable and an asset that becomes part of the schools identity, it needs to be consistent. Volunteers are inconsistent but Amy is not because she's NOT doing a little volunteering, she is working for free. The goal was to make it more of a cooperative garden but its just not. Amy does 90% of the work. And it will take years of organization to get more teachers on board in a meaningful way (like the model of commitment from Merrill and Dmitry), where the parents from each classroom are actually involved. This is a huge undertaking really. Especially considering that this is only year 3 and we spent the first two years mainly just building boxes and fences and a (sadly underutilized) outdoor classroom.
The things of value in this school need to be focused on and supported. How can we make that happen??? Just look what our kids have grown, thanks to Amy.
Isn't it beautiful!!!

"pickles are cucumbers soaked in genius."
Mac, age 12

such a hippie...

Two things I have been hearing and reading about everywhere are watercress and kombucha.

It turns out that watercress is the best of the best super foods for you and has everything good in it and you don't have to eat bowls and bowls of it to see the benefits, only a handful here and there. (Plus I love it in salad). Check the link and make sure you click on the comparison chart where it tells you how much better it is than just about anything on the planet. And its easy to grow!
watercress, the superfood

And Kombucha! I just heard an NPR thing about it from this hilarious British guy who's doing a BBC series called "Grow Your Own Drugs". He's a scientist who was very skeptical about all the hippy-dippy stuff so he decided to test it all, grow it all and now he makes tinctures of this and that and herbal salves etc right along with his antibiotics and aspirin.
And he raved about kombucha, while reminding all of us that the process of making it at home is very similar to making beer and therefore it is necessary to take uber precautions sterilizing everything.
But I like the store kind. The one with ginger is incredible. It tastes a little like fermented cider and might not be good if you don't like a boozy taste. But it has very little actual acohol!
Check it out! kombucha, fricken delicious to me and good for you

the boys keep on growing!!